Watchers (58 page)

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Authors: Dean Koontz

Tags: #Suspense, #Fiction, #Thrillers

BOOK: Watchers

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Nora said, “Even the genetic structure of a species is fluid these days.”

Einstein woofed agreement.

Nora said, “Scary, isn’t it?”

“A little,” Travis said as they approached the light-bedecked southern entrance to the fog-mantled Golden Gate Bridge, which was all but invisible in the mist. “But maximum fluidity is basically a good thing. Social and financial fluidity guarantee freedom. I believe—and I hope—that we’re heading toward an age when the role of governments will inevitably dwindle, when there’ll be no way to regulate and control people as thoroughly as was possible in the past. Totalitarian governments won’t be able to stay in power.”

“How so?”

“Well, how can a dictatorship control its citizens in a high-tech society of maximum fluidity? The only way is to refuse to allow high tech to intrude, seal the borders, and live entirely in an earlier age. But that’d be national suicide for any country that tried it. They couldn’t compete. In a few decades, they’d be modern aborigines, primitive by the standards of the civilized high-tech world. Right now, for instance, the Soviets try to restrict computers to their defense industry, which can’t last. They’ll have to computerize their entire economy and teach their people to use computers—and
then
how can they keep the screws tight when their citizens have been given the means to manipulate the system and foil its controls on them?”

At the entrance to the bridge, no northbound toll was collected. They drove onto the span, where the speed limit had been drastically reduced because of the weather.

Looking up at the ghostly skeleton of the bridge, which glistened with condensation and vanished in the fog, Nora said, “You seem to think the world will be paradise in a decade or two.”

“Not paradise,” he said. “Easier, richer, safer, happier. But not a paradise. After all, there will still be all the problems of the human heart and all the potential sicknesses of the human mind. And the new world’s bound to bring us some new dangers as well as blessings.”

“Like the thing that killed your landlord,” she said.

“Yes.”

In the back seat, Einstein growled.

That Thursday afternoon, August 26, Vince Nasco drove to Johnny The Wire Santini’s place in San Clemente to pick up the past week’s report, which was when he learned of the murder of Ted Hockney in Santa Barbara the previous evening. The condition of the corpse, especially the missing eyes, linked it to The Outsider. Johnny had also ascertained that the NSA had quietly assumed jurisdiction in the case, which convinced Vince it was related to the Banodyne fugitives.

That evening, he got a newspaper and, over a dinner of seafood enchiladas and Dos Equis at a Mexican restaurant, he read about Hockney and about the man who had rented the house where the murder occurred— Travis Cornell. The press was reporting that Cornell, a former real-estate broker who had once been a member of Delta Force, kept a panther in the house and that the cat had killed Hockney, but Vince knew that the cat was bullshit, just a cover story. The cops said they wanted to talk to Cornell and to an unidentified woman seen with him, though they had not filed any charges against them.

The story also had one line about Cornell’s dog: “Cornell and the woman may be traveling with a golden retriever.”

If I can find Cornell, Vince thought, I’ll find the dog.

This was the first break he’d had, and it confirmed his feeling that owning the retriever was a part of his great destiny.

To celebrate, he ordered more seafood enchiladas and beer.

Travis, Nora, and Einstein stayed Thursday night at a motel in Marin County, north of San Francisco. They got a six-pack of San Miguel at a convenience store and take-out chicken, biscuits, and coleslaw from a fast-food restaurant, and ate a late dinner in the room.

Einstein enjoyed the chicken and showed considerable interest in the beer.

Travis decided to pour half a bottle in the new yellow plastic dish they had gotten the retriever during their shopping spree earlier in the day. “But no more than half a bottle, no matter how much you like it. I want you sober for some questions and answers.”

After dinner, the three of them sat on the king-size bed, and Travis unwrapped the Scrabble game. He put the board upside down on the mattress, with the playing surface concealed, and Nora helped him sort all the lettered game tiles into twenty-six piles.

Einstein watched with interest and did not seem even slightly woozy from his half-bottle of San Miguel.

“Okay,” Travis said, “I need more detailed answers than we’ve been able to get with yes-and-no questions. It occurred to me that this might work.”

“Ingenious,” Nora agreed.

To the dog, Travis said, “I ask you a question, and you indicate the letters that are needed to spell out the answer, one letter at a time, word by word. You got it?”

Einstein blinked at Travis, looked at the stacks of lettered tiles, raised his eyes to Travis again, and grinned.

Travis said, “All right. Do you know the name of the laboratory from which you escaped?”

Einstein put his nose to the pile of Bs.

Nora plucked a tile off the stack and put it on the portion of the board that Travis had left clear.

In less than a minute, the dog spelled BANODYNE.

“Banodyne,” Travis said thoughtfully. “Never heard of it. Is that the entire name?”

Einstein hesitated, then began to choose more letters until he had spelled out BANODYNE LABORATORIES INC.

On a pad of motel stationery, Travis made a note of the answer, then returned all the tiles to their individual stacks. “Where is Banodyne located?”

IRVINE.

“That makes sense,” Travis said. “I found you in the woods north of Irvine. All right . . . I found you on Tuesday, May eighteenth. When had you escaped from Banodyne?”

Einstein stared at the tiles, whined, and made no choices.

“In all the reading you’ve done,” Travis said, “you’ve learned about months, weeks, days, and hours. You have a sense of time now.”

Looking at Nora, the dog whined again.

She said, “He has a sense of time now, but he didn’t have one when he escaped, so it’s hard to remember how long he was on the run.”

Einstein immediately began to indicate letters: THATS RIGHT.

“Do you know the names of any researchers at Banodyne?”

DAVIS WEATHERBY.

Travis made a note of the name. “Any others?”

Hesitating frequently to consider possible spellings, Einstein finally produced LAWTON HANES, AL HUDSTUN, and a few more.

After noting all of them on the motel stationery, Travis said, “These will be some of the people looking for you.”

YES. AND JOHNSON.

“Johnson?” Nora said. “Is he one of the scientists?”

NO. The retriever thought for a moment, studied the stacks of letters, and finally continued: SECURITY.

“He’s head of security at Banodyne?” Travis asked.

NO. BIGGER.

“Probably a federal agent of some kind,” Travis told Nora as she returned the letters to their stacks.

To Einstein, Nora said, “Do you know this Johnson’s first name?”

Einstein gazed at the letters and mewled, and Travis was about to tell him it was all right if he didn’t know Johnson’s first name, but then the dog attempted to spell it: LEMOOOL.

“There is no such name,” Nora said, taking the letters away.

Einstein tried again: LAMYOULL. Then again: LIMUUL.

“That’s not a name, either,” Travis said.

A third time: LEMB YOU WILL.

Travis realized the dog was struggling to spell the name phonetically. He chose six lettered tiles of his own: LEMUEL.

“Lemuel Johnson,” Nora said.

Einstein leaned forward and nuzzled her neck. He was wiggling with pleasure at having gotten the name across to them, and the springs of the motel bed creaked.

Then he stopped nuzzling Nora and spelled DARK LEMUEL.

“Dark?” Travis said. “By ‘dark’ you mean Johnson is . . . evil?”

NO. DARK.

Nora restacked the letters and said, “Dangerous?”

Einstein snorted at her, then at Travis, as if to say they were sometimes unbearably thickheaded. NO. DARK.

For a moment they sat in silence, thinking, and at last Travis said, “Black! You mean Lemuel Johnson is a black man.”

Einstein chuffed softly, shook his head up and down, swept his tail back and forth on the bedspread. He indicated nineteen letters, his longest answer: THERES HOPE FOR YOU YET.

Nora laughed.

Travis said, “Wiseass.”

But he was exhilarated, filled with a joy that he would have been hard-pressed to describe if he had been required to put it into words. They had been communicating with the retriever for many weeks, but the Scrabble tiles provided a far greater dimension to their communication than they had enjoyed previously. More than ever, Einstein seemed to be their own child. But there was also an intoxicating feeling of breaking through the barriers of normal human experience, a feeling of transcendence. Einstein was no ordinary mutt, of course, and his high intelligence was more human than canine, but he
was
a dog—more than anything else, a dog—and his intelligence was still qualitatively different from that of a man, so there was inevitably a strong sense of mystery and great wonder in this interspecies dialogue. Staring at THERES HOPE FOR YOU YET, Travis thought a broader meaning could be read into the message, that it could be directed at all humankind.

For the next half an hour, they continued questioning Einstein, and Travis recorded the dog’s answers. In time they discussed the yellow-eyed beast that had killed Ted Hockney.

“What is the damned thing?” Nora asked.

THE OUTSIDER.

Travis said, “ ‘The Outsider’? What do you mean?”

THATS WHAT THEY CALLED IT.

“The people in the lab?” Travis asked. “Why did they call it The Outsider?”

BECAUSE IT DOES NOT BELONG.

Nora said, “I don’t understand.”

TWO SUCCESSES. ME AND IT. I AM DOG. IT IS NOTHING THAT CAN BE NAMED. OUTSIDER.

Travis said, “It’s intelligent, too?”